Newport Music Festival turns 50

Tuesday

There’s going to be a whole lot of new in the old — or at least comfortably middle-aged — Newport Music Festival this year.

The classical music festival turns 50 in 2018. Executive Director Pamela Pantos said the season’s July 4 through 22 program will be a fusion of the festival’s history and a long view of years to come.

Violinist Joshua Bell will perform for one night only at the July 15 festival gala at Ochre Court. Pantos calls Bell “one of the most exciting violinists of our time.”

“You feel like you have been transported to another galaxy. It’s beyond playing the notes. You feel he’s the vessel and the music is being created as you hear it,” Pantos said.

Bell is the subject of a 2016 children’s book, “The Man with the Violin,” and its 2017 sequel, “The Dance of the Violin.” He is also known for his participation in an experiment arranged by the Washington Post on Jan.12, 2007. That’s the day Bell dressed in plain clothes, took his $3.5 million Stradivarius into the L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington, D.C., and played compositions by Bach, Schubert and others for 45 minutes.

The Post reported that only small children noticed Bell’s playing, while most adults hurried by without a second glance.

Bell is invested in education and community outreach, Pantos, said, which makes him a perfect choice for this year’s gala musician.

“The importance of the 50th anniversary season is to honor the legacy of the past while looking to the future,” Pantos said. “We have such a tremendous legacy, but it looks like 2018. That’s the whole emphasis of the entire season.”

To achieve this, the festival looked back at every single program from the last 49 years and took one major piece from each season and “used that as the basic construct for the 50th.” Pantos said.

Among the returning performers is mezzo-soprano and Metropolitan Opera star Frederica von Stade, who sang at the Newport Music Festival in 1970. She returns on July 7 at The Breakers, accompanied on piano by opera composer Jake Heggie. He will also perform a repertoire of his own compositions in a “Meet the Composer” concert the next day at the Newport Art Museum.

“It’s autobiographical,” Pantos said of von Stade’s program which features selected pieces “that have been important to her throughout her career.”

“For the first time in a long time we’ll have a living composer at the festival,” Pantos said of Heggie. “It’s very important that we honor the people who are living today who are creating for the future.”

One retro inspiration is free concerts. This year, the season opener at King Park on July 4 featuring Boston Brass, as well as two outdoor concerts at the Newport Art Museum, will have free admission.

Boston Brass played the festival in the 1990s. Pantos said artists from past years are returning for this special anniversary, and she worked with them to discover what they’ve played in the past and would like to play again this season.

“A big piece of our future mission is that we need to be here not only as a summer festival, but we need to be integrated and available to our community throughout the year,” Pantos said. “The next step is for us to go to schools and community centers and ask them what they need.”

Part of the festival’s enhanced outreach plan can be seen on its website, revamped in the final week of January. For the first time, media is embedded in pages, including video of past concerts, so visitors to the site can hear some of the planned music before investing in a ticket. Venue photos, maps, and general information also appear on each concert’s page.

Another festival first will be artists addressing the audience from the stage. “They’ll talk about themselves and the music, why a piece means something to them or why they’re excited about playing it,” Pantos said. “That deepening of the experience for the audience is what I’m most excited about.”

Artists will also be encouraged to interact with the audience after concerts.

“I can’t wait for the audience to have unique and complete experiences,” Pantos said. “You can go some places and hear beautiful music, but to be in the venues we are, to have the artistry that we have onstage ... I’m excited about informing our audience and having them have deeper experiences.”

?For information or to order tickets, visit newportmusic.org or call the box office at (401) 849-0700.

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